All Six Toyota Managers Agreed: Speaking Up Would Damage Their Careers

Six managers sat at a table in a Toyota manufacturing plant in 2006 with their fate in their hands. A memo building a strong case for why Toyota’s automobiles may be unsafe sat on the table in front of the union employees, who spoke in hushed tones. The upper level management has instructed managers to increase production. The number of vehicles manufactured was the main focus of Toyota. All six men knew the risk of reporting the problems they had documented from 2000 to 2005 in the memo. By speaking the truth, they could be permanently damaging their careers at Toyota. It was not the Toyota way to break rank and object to upper management decisions. It was very un-Japanese as well. Finding the inner strength to let their ethical instincts lead them, they made the noble effort to draw attention to the manufacturing problems. After assembling five years of research and then risking their careers at Toyota, their warnings were reportedly ignored. Toyota would be in a more profitable place today if those six union men were heard.

Toyota’s historical culture of excellence in manufacturing is what created the urgency for the managers to report the problems to upper level management. They were old school Toyota employees and proud of it. The failure of the company’s leaders to act on the problem immediately, and instead wait until Toyota’s manufacturing errors found their way to international headlines was the direct cause of the now historic recalls of Toyota vehicles.

There is bitter irony in this situation because Toyota wrote the book on automobile quality. It was a very profitable urban legend that Toyota vehicles “never break down” and “can be driven forever.” Toyota was another word for quality in America. Another irony is that it is reported non-Japanese employees could not authorize a recall of American sold automobiles when the problems became apparent. Toyota’s lack of trust for non-Japanese executives is discussed in this article.

So what was the reason for ignoring the warnings of managers in 2006 that there were serious manufacturing problems with the vehicles? Why would an upper level executive turn a blind eye when it would ultimately impact the company’s bottom line? The Toyota employees who risked their jobs to do what was rights believed it was the unrealistic sales numbers that drove their bosses too reduce the quality of the vehicles to increase production. The desire for more sales drove their behavior.

Hindsight is 20/20, no doubt. It helps us see that a blind eye towards manufacturing problems may be created by temptation to put sales numbers first. Long-term goals of safety and accountability are some how lost in the ferver. The negative impact on reputation and sales is devastating. More on the story about the men who came forward in 2006 follows:

March 08, 2010|By John M. Glionna

John Glionna / Los Angeles Times Reporting from Toyota City, Japan — All six Toyota veterans around the table agreed: The memo they were about to send to senior management could damage their careers. The workers had recognized a troubling trend. In recent years, the automaker had kicked into high gear to fill the booming U.S. demand for smaller, more gas-efficient vehicles.

The union men had watched the company take what they believed were dangerous safety and manpower shortcuts to lower costs and boost production.

Alienating bosses could make the men company pariahs. But they knew they had to sound the alarm. From 2000 to 2005, their memo pointed out, Toyota had recalled more than 5 million cars — 36% of all sold vehicles, a rate higher than other companies.

Toyota’s failure to act, the two-page notice warned, may “become a great problem that involves the company’s survival.”

They added: “We are concerned about the processes which are essential for producing safe cars, but that ultimately may be ignored, with production continued in the name of competition.”

They presented theletterto management and held their breath. But they needn’t have worried. Toyota never responded.

Over the years, even before the recent worldwide recalls, Toyota was warned about declining product quality and worsening working conditions at its Japanese plants.

The warnings came not only from Wakatsuki’s union, but from the widow of a 30-year-old Toyota worker who dropped dead at his desk and from an auto industry activist known as the Ralph Nader of Japan.

In 2008, the National Labor Committee, a U.S. human-rights advocacy group, released a 65-page report titled “The Toyota You Don’t Know,” detailing what it alleged were serious human-rights violations.

The report linked Toyota to human trafficking and sweatshop abuse in connection with its importing of foreign guest workers from China and Vietnam to work in its Japanese factories.

Many are pressured to work overtime without pay, the report claimed, adding that there were signs similar practices were emerging in the United States.

“Toyota is imposing its two-tier, low-wage model at its nonunion plants in the south” of the U.S., the report read, “which will result in wages and benefits being slashed across the entire auto industry.”